1. There's enough biomass, but we'll have to have one hell of a population receed to make it work.
2. Probably. Unless they go nuts about growing algae in the desert someplace. The energy costs will make this decentralised, of course. Economically, they won't have much choice.
3. Or, we can get into hydroponic greenhouse gardening in a big way. It'd be the only viable way to farm unfarmable land.
4. Most fertilizers today are made from petroleum. Without petroleum, no fertilizers, no massive production. See my Point 1.

We having fun yet? On the upside, populations tend to fall in developed countries as the birthrate declines. There's not as much pressure to pump out a dozen kids when 11 of them will survive to adulthood. The downside to it is, it takes a lot of technology and energy to efficiently feed all those people.

In the USA, they even have guns. Like 3 guns per person. A revolution over there would be easily won.

Handguns and hunting rifles are pretty much useless against tanks and even armored cars. A .22 Long Rifle is pretty much useless against body armor. You'll also need something against the drones the cops are buying up.

You'll need explosives, EMP weapons for the drones, communications gear for when they cut the phones and internet off, all kindsa stuff. A lotta this stuff is not just laying around.

And of course they're going to legislate into existence anything they can to continue consolidating and increasing their powers over the citizens. If it means invalidating the Bill of Rights, they'll do it. If it means controlling information flow except in cases where it props up the government, they're there. If it means making everybody into a criminal who can be swept up at random and locked away without recourse, well, they're getting there.

In the long run, you're probably right. In the short run, things are bad and they'll get worse. Buckle up, this ride's gonna be a motherfucker.

And yet there are still those Craigslist 'employment' ads that promise 400/week for 5-10 hours 'work' spamming newsgroups and such. If it were automated, those 'jobs' would be lost. No big deal, really, cause when it's all said and done, it works out to about 25 cents an hour.

Multilevel marketting scam, anyone?

What the Arab Spring is doing is, seriously fucking up their computer models to keep things at status quo. Nobody predicted it, and there's been fallout over that lil factoid. It's change, and change in the wrong direction, from their point of view. Anything that gets in the way of the management and control of the people (or sheeple, if that's your prefered term) is evil and must be destroyed. Change is scary, change is bad, especially if it sweeps your bastards out of office and the oppositions bastards in.

Traditionally, what the Right has always done is try to maintain the satus quo. There's a reason they're called 'conservatives', ya know. What that traditionally meant in the US was, smaller governments, less taxes, fewer restrictions on businesses, you know, the guys who kick into their campaign warchests. The 'liberals' have always been about 'uplifting the poor', 'creating better working conditions', that kind of thing, basically, 'cut into everybody's pocket cause we have a social program we just can't resist'. In my experience, there's never been a social program the Left didn't like.

The problem comes when these groups get the 'nanny state' idea locked in their genes. Government must now control the population for their own good no matter what. If they need to jail or shoot 10% of the population as 'dissidents', they'll do it & point to the 90% that's been 'saved'. No matter your party affiliation, these days, the answer is always more government control, more draconian laws, more cops, more troops, more interventions. Governments get so much experience in crisis management that they lose their marbles when there are no crises to manage, thus, they'll invent one to manage. Bonus points if the 'solution' to the crisis is yet more government, more government control, more management of the 'sheeple'. The neocons have been theorising since the 50's that in order to 'save' America, they need to remake the myths. Who cares if these myths are actually contraproductive or outright lies, they're necessary to 'keep America strong'. We'll always need an enemy, and if nobody steps up to the plate, we'll make one. If nobody hates America, there's zero justification for a pre-WWI style military, where all the citizens went into the reserves and a core military was retained to train and lead them in time of war.

The downside of the 'nanny state' government is, it becomes important to remove any possibility of revolution against the government. They monitor large scale sales of nitrated fertilizer these days, somebody could mix it with kerosene and make a drum barrel bomb. There are always new gun control laws coming up through various governments here in the US, designed to take away any citizen's right to self defense. Leave it to the cops, they're supposed to be trained for this. Well, all the cops do anymore is clean up the mess in violent crimes, and knock doors in for nonviolent crimes.

It's possible to build a homebrew cruise missile using off the shelf parts for the guidance and control circuits. How long til rc model airplanes are licensed even stricter than guns?

Lying to cops is a crime. If they're investigating you, your false data will be considered lying to the cops. Three or four test cases by J Random Eagerbeaver Prosecutor will establish this, just like half the 'laws' get established. It's called precidence, and it makes up a humongous amount of English and American common law.

Everything not forbidden is manditory. Welcome to Utopia.

There must be Big Brother porn somewhere...

featuring Hitler, no doubt

That spread he did with the midgets and the giraffe was pretty funny.

Take a good look at what the majority operating system in use in desktop computers is. It ain't OSX, not by a longshot. Unless your computer has that lil Apple logo on it, or you decided to penguinise, it's running some version of Windows. All non-Apple computers ship with it preloaded. How is this not a monopoly? And don't give me the 'Apple Exists!' excuse, Apple is still interested in total vertical control of their product as to not 'dilute the Apple brand', which is why they freak out over the 'Hackintoshes'.

This is the United States. SPEAK SPANISH already, goddamit!!